Laying the Rails for ADDRESS: By Francis H. Sisson, Vice-President of the Guaranty Trust Company of New UNIV. OF CALIF Laying the Rails for Future Business T SEEMS too obvious to require repetition, yet apparently the fact is still little understood that the efficiency and adequacy of the arteries largely determine the health of the body. For a period of thirty years, with an increasing intensity of action, this country has pursued the policy of constriction and starvation towards its arteries of commerce, through which the life blood of the body economic must flow. Sclerosis and paralysis inevitably followed. In striking proof of the folly of this treatment, when the necessities of war force the Government to take over the care of this ailing patient all the nostrums, quack remedies and prescriptions of the years are thrown out of the windows and a complete change of treatment is prescribed. This new treatment has general approval for the conditions of today, but what of tomorrow? That is the question which the business men of the United States must face and answer if this country is to achieve its oft-described "manifest destiny." The present government control of the railroads, while representing a progressive step, cannot be considered as offering a solution of the transportation problem; it is a temporary and extreme measure, 373734 forced by the exigencies of a great crisis for which there had been no preparation. Reaping the Harvest The incalculable importance of the railroads in every phase of our individual and national existence was dramatically, I might even say tragically, demonstrated last winter, when the grim spectres of cold, hunger and want stalked in the wake of transportation paralysis. Never before in our history have we so thoroughly appreciated the importance of distribution as an economic factor. It is to be hoped that we will never forget this costly experience. The demands of war, sudden and colossal as they are, have not been responsible for this deplorable state of affairs; they merely accelerated and accentuated the inevitable result which would have come sooner or later under existing conditions. We are simply reaping the harvest of a decade of railroad baiting born of ignorance, prejudice and political expediency, which, as a people, we did not understand, and the consequences of which we did not anticipate. The Shackled Giant Punishment visited on the many for the sins of the few, the reduction and limitation of rates, the multiplication of regulations and regulating bodies, the increase of taxes and impositions, the rising costs of labor and material, have for the last ten years added new bonds to bind this modern Gulliver of ours, until he lay helpless, the victim of those he should live to serve. The strong hand of the Government, in taking over the railroad situation, has released many of these shackles, and by coördinating direction and operation is restoring that ability to serve which had been denied the achievement of its purpose. Preparing for the Future But the foundations for the unprecedented economic struggle which inevitably will follow the present armed conflict must be laid now. We were woefully unprepared for war; we dare not be equally unready for peace. And one of the chief factors in preparing for the future unquestionably is that of railway extension, for the carriers will play as important a part in helping to win the battles of the prospective international combat in trade fields as they are today in speeding our military strength to the battleline of freedom for the victory which democracy must and will win. Are these great weapons in our commercial warfare to be privately or publicly owned and operated? Why have they not been equal to the occasion and how can they be made so? Can preparations for the future be made in the light of the past? In recent years we have lost sight of the great influence which the railroads have exerted in the |